Controversial figure and
art dealer Jeffrey Deitch
came to Leimert Park Saturday, February 15 for
“Open,” a new group show
at the inaugural night of
Michelle Joan Papillion’s
re-launch of her P.I.A.
gallery
“This is a perfect example of why it’s so dynamic. The room we’re standing in right now. There
are so many good artists that are here. Virtually every artist in the world
wants to show here,” said
Deitch in regards to the
L.A. art scene.
Internationally renowned
artist Mark Bradford was
also at the event. When
asked about his recent purchase of a nearby building in the heart of Leimert
Park, he smiled and said,
“It is going to be an exhibition space.”
It is a new era in Black
L.A.
Los Angeles having long

Gallery owner Michelle Papillion, artist Hugo McCloud and art dealer Jeffrey Deitch stand before a work by artist Kenturah Davis at
the premier of Papillion in Leimert Park on Saturday, February 15.

been a redheaded stepchild to the New York art
scene has upped its game
in recent years with sophisticated shows, several
elite art schools and programs, but as L.A. is fragmented and unconnected,
so too is the art scene here
It’s like a precocious
child genius who paints
in the paint room and
plays the piano in the pi-

ano room and does both
those things very well, but
doesn’t get that art can’t
be contained like recess
and lunch.
Deitch’s attempt to help
MOCA grow up was met
with lots of crying by the
closed L.A. art scene.
“[L.A.] is a very diverse
community and what I see
happening is that it is goplease see Papillion, page 7

Southwest
College
Remembers
Dr. Lakin

Lakin Family and Southwest
College faculty cut the ribbon
for Thomas G. Lakin building.
by

Teka-Lark Fleming

On Thursday, February
13 the community gathered together at Southwest College to celebrate
the re-opening of the remodeled Thomas G. Lakin Physical Fitness Center.
In 1986, Dr. Lakin was
credited with increasing
enrollment at Southwest
College by 60%.
please see Lakin, page 7

A Tree Falling in Inglewood Could Cost
Taxpayers Millions of Dollars in Court
Despite Chronicle’s warnings in July and August, mayor failed to listen
by

Randall Fleming

Inglewood homeowners
could be on the hook for
millions of dollars owing
to a massive tree that fell
on three vehicles in early
February.
The Chronicle had
warned the mayor and
Public Works Superintendent Harry Frisby, Jr. of
such a possibility as far
back as July, 2013 and
again in August via two
separate stories on the
front page of the newspaper.
The massive tree
crushed two brand
new 2013 vehicles and
wrecked a third one that

was only moved about 50
feet forward to allow Inglewood Public Works
employees to access the
two crushed vehicles.
Frisby had also been
invited to two District
1 Block Club Captains
meetings in 2013 to speak
about trees in Inglewood.
According to Inglewood
please see Crushed, page 6

To see several more photos regarding this story, please scan
the QR code below or visit:

This pretty picture could cost Inglewood residents several
million dollars because of budget cuts and city council raises.

Morningside Park Chronicle

Page 2

A word from the publisher

Food Deserts are Mirages
Don’t call people’s communities
food deserts. It is disparaging to their
community and it’s disparaging to the
desert.
Deserts are natural. Deserts are
beautiful. Deserts are needed.
The Earth’s modern deserts are a consequence of one of
the following mechanisms:
Air mass subsidence which created the Sahara and Antarctica; Rain shadows which created the Mojave; Distant
moisture sources which created the Gobi; Cold offshore
sea-surface temperatures which created the Atacama.
In our deserts we find copper, crystals, agave nectar,
quartz, jade and gold.
Environmental writer Chris Clark said in the article
“Why You Should Love the Desert” for KCET, “The deserts are some of the most intact and biodiverse ecosystems
North America has to offer.”
So the term food desert is not only disparaging to a
community that has been purposely denied a resource by
other humans, but it is also an inaccurate term for the desert, which is an abundant diverse ecosystem that the earth
needs.
Catchy phrases are for corporations to sell electronic
toys. Catchy phrases should not be used to explain purposely cruel actions by humans against other humans.
Racist corporate supermarkets don’t build quality supermarkets in our community, because they think Black
people aren’t worth anything.
Because that is what their marketing department told
them.
At about 12 percent of the U.S. population AfricanAmericans aren’t worth pretending to be interested in.
There is nothing beautiful or natural or necessary about
that.
There is something very wrong with how these academic catchy terms seem to never make the rich and those
who are doing the oppressing look badly, but always seem
to instead assist in making the people being oppressed or
where people who are oppressed live look badly.
Terms like “ghetto,” “urban” and “food desert” all seem
like they are things that “just happen.”
I asked a young man once what he thought food desert meant and he answered, “Some effed-up thing in the
ghetto where blacks and Mexicans live.”
This was a young Latino man.
After the grant cycle is over the community is simply
left with sophisticated new racial slurs with academic pedigrees that ten years later just means something bad that
happens in communities where Black and Latino people
live, because Black and Latino people live there.
“Food desert,” “urban,” and “single mother” are all
slurs and they are all pieces of lies.

February 21, 2014

Inglewood Murder Rate Rises
with Mayor and Chief’s Salaries
by

Randall Fleming

According to the Web
sites CrimeMapping.com,
there have been no fewer than six homicides in Inglewood in the first seven
weeks of 2014.
One year earlier, during the first two months
of 2013,there were no homicides reported in Inglewood, but that appeared
to have changed in the
months following IPD
Chief Mark Fronterotta’s
appointment by Inglewood
Mayor James T. Butts.
A January 24 story in the
L.A. Times talks about the
number of deaths in 2013:
“At least 17 people were
murdered in Inglewood last
year, according to the Homicide Report. According

A January 29 shooting incident at the 500 block of S. Flower
Street near the Madison Square Garden’s Forum in Inglewood
is said by a number of residents to have been a murder. IPD
Chief Fronterotta reported the incident as an assault.
to the Los Angeles Times
blog, the city was the 21st
most deadly neighborhood

out of L.A. County’s 270
neighborhoods.”
please see Murders, page 6

Mr. John Peoples’ Slave Ship Replica
Reparation day event held at IUSD’s Inglewood HS
by

Teka-Lark Fleming

Mr. John Peoples of
the National Reparation
Day Committee (NRDC)
brought his custom crafted shave ship replica to
Inglewood High School
for their Black History Month assembly on
Wednesday, February 12.
“When we think of slav-

iI-Spy...

ery, we think of so-called
Black people, but we all
are enslaved,” said Mr.
Peoples to the crowd of
high school students.
The crowd of students
understood and quietly
nodded.
“You can’t name any
slave ships. They took it
out the history books,”
said Mr. Peoples referring

to the ships that brought
the kidnapped ancestors of the Descendants
of Black Africa Slaves
(DOBAS) to the U.S.
Archiving your history is important, because
the version that is written
down is the version that
is true.
“Slave ships were
please see Reparations, page 4

Walsh employee is one of many residents working on the Metro Crenshaw Line
Ethan Smith is working
to deliver Metro’s Crenshaw Corridor light rail
project to promote mobility and foster economic
development in the Crenshaw and Inglewood communities.
Even before then, however, he honed his engineering skills while he
gave back to the community of South Los Angeles. .
Beginning last August, Ethan, 24, began
working as project engineer for Walsh Construction Company one
of the named partners in
the Walsh-Shea Corridor
Constructors joint venture contracted to conduct
the much anticipated design-build project for the
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation
Authority (Metro). He
currently works directly
as an apprentice with the
project’s business manager and describes his experience as nothing short of
phenomenal.

“In my short time
with Walsh, I have already witnessed the company’s dedication toward enhancing the vitality of the community
as well as their commitment to building young
engineers and professionals to be the leaders in today’s industry,” Smith
said. “Coupled with an
ability to work with Metro and learn about developing transportation infrastructure in our community, I feel like this is a real

opportunity that will lead
to a career with exponential growth and longevity.”
Growing up in South
Los Angeles, he dedicated himself to representing
the best in the community.
“There are a lot of stereotypes out there about our
community, but my mom
was always clear that we
create our own destiny.”
He attended Verbum Dei
High School in Watts. It
was there that he saw that
college was a possibiliplease see Smith, page 7

“All Aboard!“ Called the Train
Conductor at the Inglewood Depot

The Yellow Cars came to Inglewood several decades ago: part 1/2
By Diane Sombrano, Pres.
of The Historical Society
of Centinela Valley
As the Crenshaw-LAX
Metro line continues to be
a plan in the making, it is
interesting to look back to
the first rail system that
linked Inglewood to downtown Los Angeles.
The Santa Fe rail line
through Inglewood dates
back to 1888. It was
through the efforts of Inglewood city founder Daniel Freeman that the link
from L.A. to the new “Resort City” Redondo Beach
made a stop in Freeman’s
planned community of Inglewood.
Freeman previously grew
grain (mostly barely) on
the nearly 24,000 acres,
known as his Rancho Centinela, and agreed to build
the train depot to make the
stop possible. Right next to
the field is where he located his land office (the first
Inglewood real estate office) where he began to sell

[ LOVE and LAUGHTER w/ PASTOR P ]

10 Reasons I Love LGBTQ Folk

by

South L.A. resident Ethan Smith of Walsh Construction Company.

individual house lots. He
also hired the same architect from that office to design the Inglewood Hotel, a boarding house which
occupied the entire block
surrounded by La Brea Avenue (then known as Commercial Street), Market
Street, Manchester Boulevard (then known as Pimento) and Queen Street.
Like many other downtown businesses that suffered major damage during
the earthquake of 1920, so
too did the Boardinghouse.
Newspaper photographs
showed that its exterior brick wall fell into the
street leaving the previously occupied guest rooms
looking much like a modern doll house.
Many early 20th century Angelinos boarded the
train to see the effects of
the earthquake which had
caused so much damage,
and many decided to move
to the prosperous town-site.
The 6.4 magnitude earthquake of 1930 made its im-

pact by causing damage to
the Inglewood High and
Crozier school sites requiring new construction to replace the only 20-year-old
Inglewood High buildings.
The Fields Act became
law within a month requiring a state architect review
of building plans and construction of new California
school buildings. Not only was the earthquake damage so significant that state
building codes were enacted to avoid similar damage
in the future, but the geological studies of the event
documented the Inglewood-Newport fault line
as significantly important.
With all the media attention from the Los Angeles
Times and Herald Examiner, the young community became not just a place
to come see but a place to
come live.
Part 2 of the history of the
Yellow Cars in Inglewood
will be in the next edition
of the MP Chronicle.
MorningsideParkChronicle.com

Page 3

Pastor Seth Pickens

1. My faith tells me to
love them unconditionally; I do.
2. Some want to get married, and some don’t; go
figure. They also bleed
red if you cut them.
3. With the bullying and
hate many face, they
qualify as an oppressed
people. Christians support
oppressed people.
4. They were here before
I was born, and they’ll be
here after I die.
5. Their demands are
forcing us to rethink the
potentialities of God.

6. Brothers can really
dress.
7. Homosexual behavior is
documented in many species of animals; maybe
some are just born that way.
8. As much respect as I
have for the soul of animals, I have even more
respect for human beings.
9. Let’s see, art, music,
dance, church, reality
TV…. they aren’t the only ones who can steal the
show, but they tend to do
it darn well.
10. Gay literally means
happy. In the name of all
that is holy, what’s wrong
with that?

Rev. Seth Pickens is Senior Pastor of
Zion Hill Baptist Church, a thriving fellowship
in South Los Angeles committed to the spiritual, mental, and physical development of its
congregation and community. Prior to pastoring, Seth enjoyed successful stints as a school
teacher, a salesman and a stand-up comedian.
Visit www.zhill.org for more information.

Fabulous Cat for Adoption
Sam is a five-month-old
dog in a cat suit.
He’s calm, outgoing and
affectionate.
If you have a small dog
who could use a new pal/
heating pad, this would be
your guy. Sam’s a cat lover
too.
Sam has been altered,
vaccinated, box trained and
is real easy on the eyes.

Eagle Nebula, Century
Heights native and currently a Fairview Heights resident is the recipient of the
inaugural round of 2013 IGAP funding.
I-GAP stands for Inglewood Growing Artists Program. It provides grants
at the levels of $10,000,
$15,000 and $25,000 to
bring public art to the community. Inglewood is the
only community south of
the 10 freeway to have
such a generous grant program for artist-driven projects.
Nebula is a recipient of
the $10,000 grant and her
project is the “Inglewood
Poetry Project.”
After graduating Howard University in D.C and
spending time in Ghana
and Brooklyn, Nebula decided to come back to her
hometown of Inglewood,
where her journey began.
“I’ve been a poet from
a very young age. I have
been a poet since third
grade when I was eight
years old, but I was always
more than that. Poetry was
like my gateway drug into being a creative person”
joked Nebula.
She explained how poetry not only helped her
with creativity, but it also helped her challenge her
shyness.
“As a young person I
was very much a closeted artist. I would do things
alone. My mother noticed I
was an artist and would put
Reparations from pg. 2
big. Slave ships carried
10,000 people, 20,000
people,” said Mr. Peoples.
Mr. People then went
on to give the student a
modern day local comparison of how big slave
ships were.

me in artistic situations and
I would run scared,” said
Nebula.
As many awkward people, Nebula also wanted to
just fit into the square peg,
but the universe had other
plans.
“When I went away to
college I was not thinking I
was an artist. I thought I’m
going to be normal. I went
to college and I was studying film and television.
Then I worked in television, which I hated, because I am an artist,” said
Nebula.
Nebula has also had success as a recording artist.
She toured Europe for five
years.
“I reluctantly became
a recording artist. I just
didn’t have anything else
to do and this thing kept
coming up, so I said let me
go with this and people
liked it,” said Nebula.
While Nebula is a poet,
lyricist and filmmaker she
is always drawn back to
poetry.
“Most of my work in
New York came from
teaching poetry workshops.
That has been my path,”
said Nebula.
The Inglewood Poetry
Project starts next month.
It is all ages. Seniors and
adults of all ages are encouraged to come down to
Darby Park and be part of
a year-long workshop that
will culminate with an anthology and spoken word
album.
Welcome back to Inglewood Eagle Nebula.
“In order to have a
slaveship to carry 25,000
people it had to be bigger
than the Forum,” said Mr.
John Peoples.
It was an informative
assembly which allowed
for a detailed explanation
as to the a big gap in U.S.
history books.

February 21, 2014

Howdy, there, folks, it’s
your Culture Nerd Vince.
This time around I am
going to talk briefly about
a couple of gentlemen I
know who have come together to produce magic
and wonder. To take their
readers into places beyond
imagination. To explore
more than just strange
new worlds. To move past
mere genres into those
places where stories cannot be so easily catego-

rized.
I am going to talk about
Genre 19 which can be
read about at the Web site,
www.genre19.com.
Genre 19 is a fiction factory. Genre 19 is a brand
in the building. It is also the partnership of two
men, Geoffrey Thorne and
Todd Harris.
Thorne is a former actor
whose work includes being a regular on the TV series, In The Heat Of The
Night) turned writer. He
has written Star Trek short

stories and novels. He also
worked on the TV shows
Law & Order: Criminal
Intent, Ben 10: Ultimate
Alien, and Leverage.
Todd Harris works as a
storyboard artist and designer. His credits include
God Of War 2 and 3, XMen Origins: Wolverine,
and After Earth.
Individually, each of
these gentlemen is a creative dynamo. Together
they are lightning in a six
pack of bottles.
please see Genre 19, page 6

Vince Moore wears more hats than a hydra at a haberdashery. He is the editor of
such titles as ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, Valkyries, The Hammer Kid, and Lazarus: Immortal
Coils; a writer of the Omnium Gatherum column for Comics Waiting Room cwr.comicswatingroom.com; the author of Total Recall: Life On Mars for Dynamite Entertainment; and works as a part-time comics retailer at Comics Ink in Culver City. Plus he
has plenty more items in the works that can’t be discussed under penalty of death
and dismemberment.

[ COOKING with SWEET RICE TEA ]

Peanut Butter Teabread

Today I’m sharing an odd
but easy sort of quick bread
using self-rising flour. The
taste is only slightly sweet
with a mild peanut butter flavor. I sliced it and slathered
it with peanut butter and jelly and it was delicious. Also
had a couple of slices with
chunks of Parmesan cheese.
You can even make a sandwich with this using peanut
butter, bananas, raisins and
roasted peanuts, almonds or
cashews. You will enjoy this
eating and serving this yummy teabread.
Ingredients:
1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter

Directions:
Turn oven to 350 degrees.
Grease 1 loaf pan and line
with parchment or wax paper. Cream the peanut butter
and sugar in a bowl together until light & fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg. Add
the milk and flour and mix
with a wooden spoon. Spoon
the mixture into the prepared
loaf pan. Place in a 350-degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Bread will test done
when inserted with a tooth-

photo: Sweet Rice Tea

Page 4

pick. If the toothpick comes
clean after removing it, the
teabread is done. Serve
warm with favorite powdered sugar glaze and enjoy
with a cup of hot tea.

Mz. Sweet Rice Tea is a native of the Midwest where she grew up on a farm and learned
to cook. Her educational background includes business administration, art
and photography, but it’s her culinary experience by which she creates a mix of fun,
tasty and healthful foods. She was cookin’ in the kitchen with her Grandma Odessa
at age 10 learning everything from setting a table, to how to dress and fry a chicken, to
traditional farm fare. Contact her: SweetRiceTea@yahoo.com
or visit her culinary website at: www.SweetRiceTea.com.

Bringing Communities Together
from Cairo to Compton

In the Kitchen of Sweet Rice Tea
We wanna know what’s cookin with you!
In other words: what are you doin’ to make it work?

Matt Sedillo Brings Back the Revolution
Local poet makes circles in national ponds

YWCA President/CEO Faye Washington

By Darren Cifarelli

discusses one of L.A.’s greatest residents

Matt Sedillo’s poetry
performances are not exactly electrifying; listening to him is closer to being electrocuted: part history lesson, part revolutionary speech, Sedillo has brought the revolution back to poetry. He is
a two-time national slam
poet and was the grand
slam champion of the
Damn Slam in Los Angeles in 2011. His collection of poetry, For What
I Might Do Tomorrow,
was published by Casa
de Poesia in 2009. He is
currently shopping newer
work, more poetry and a
play to publishers.
Sedillo is a radical, activist and poet. He proclaims himself not to be
a poet, but instead to be a
communist, and reading
and listening to his work
is like attending a political protest. He’s loud; he’s
angry; he’s smart. He approaches performances as
“confronting the lies that
justify power and replacing them with a rational
explanation of the world
as it actually is.” Re-interpreting media reports and

by

Teka-Lark Fleming

I got to speak with Los
Angeles legend Faye
Washington President and
CEO of the YWCA Greater Los Angeles at the SCE
Black History Month celebration earlier this month.
YWCA Greater Los
Angeles was founded in
1864. Its mission is eliminating racism and empowering women.
With women’s history
month coming up I thought
I’d ask Washington where
did she see Black women
going in the future.
“I see the future of black
women as becoming the
business women they have
always been. The creator
of ideas. They will start
mastering how to package
those ideas. And then become much like a young
lady back in 1891, Biddy Mason, grandmother of
L.A.”
Bridget “Biddy” Ma-

“Biddy Mason” mural
by Mark Venaglia

son was born into slavery
in Georgia in 1818. She
moved to California in
1851.
“[Biddy Mason] ended
up being the richest woman in Los Angeles. Why,
because she earned $2.50
a day. She saved it for ten
years and she purchased
the largest piece of property in downtown L.A.,”
said Washington describing Mason’s determination.
Biddy Mason won freedom for herself and her
please see Biddy Mason, page 6

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5

Matt Sedillo

writing revisionist history
into his poetry, Sedillo is
an advocate for the forgotten and the exploited.
Here is an excerpt from
Sedillo’s poem,
L.A. Is Full of Pigs:
And I wonder
As even now skid row
Is being gentrified
As this city
As this system
As the pigs
Push people
Past poverty
Past hunger
Past homelessness
Towards the very edge
of existence
On Skid Row
Where all the so-called
complexities
Of an economy

Are laid bare
Where the rich
Are literally stacked upon the poor
Justice and injustice, as
he points out, aren’t concepts exclusive to courthouses and government
buildings; they are concepts played out on street
corners and workplaces
all over the world.
Like a social revolutionary, Sedillo wants the
world to wake up: for the
worker to open his or her
eyes and see their own
exploitation for the profit of businesses, corporations and the ruling class.
“If you are a worker,
you are being robbed,” he
explains.

Every past edition is archived on
the Web site PLUS photos, video
and other content not available
in the print edition.
Real-time alerts and Chronicle
readers’ comments can be
found on FB/Twitter pages.

Crushed from pg. 1
Police Department Senior
Lead Officer Nicole Loudermilk, Frisby accepted
both offers.
Frisby, however, failed
to show up to either of
the meetings. Multiple requests for comment over
several months up to and
after the tree’s fall were
not answered.
The incident occurred
Tuesday night, February 11. Inglewood Public Works employees apparently were not able to
respond until Wednesday
morning.
According to those
on the scene, one vehicle owner was found and
was able to move her car
several yards forward so
as to allow the crew to
chainsaw the four-foot
thick tree limbs that had
crushed the 2013 Dodge
Murder from pg. 2
Fronterotta was confirmed as chief during a
city council meeting on
Wednesday, January 23,
2013.
Residents contend that
there have been more murders than have been officially reported. At least
one alleged homicide on
the 500 block S. Flower
near the newly re-opened
Forum just days after the
Eagles six-day run has apparently been reported as
an assault, and the recordbreaking murder rate and
the way the new chief of
police appears to not be
working to stop it has residents fearful.
“There have been seven
murders in the city,” said
one resident during a January church event in Inglewood. Although speaking to a crowd, the resident
asked to not be identified
owing to the fear of violent
retribution that could occur
for speaking out against
a police chief and mayor who have failed to keep
residents safe from murder,
assaults and robbery.
The latest shooting death
happened Tuesday evening on the corner of West
Beach Avenue and Venice
Way in Inglewood’s District 2.
The salaries of Inglewood’s mayor and chief of
police have also risen in
the last year.
In 2012, Butts, had a
monthly salary of $9275;

Morningside Park Chronicle
Challenger and the 2013
four-door Nissan Titan
that had been crushed by
the massive tree.
The other two cars were
towed away by the City
of Inglewood before the
owners could be found,
an action that could add
to the massive lawsuit
that taxpayers will have
to pay in a settlement or
in court if the cars’ owners pursue the case.
As can be seen by the
photos on the front page
and the Chronicle’s Web
site, the Challenger was
totaled and the Titan’s
front end was crushed.
Inglewood residents are
urged to cal Public Works
Superintendent Harry
Frisby, Jr. for any such
incidents at (310) 4125586.
For after-hour emergencies, please call (310)
412-8771.
it was raised to $13,537 in
December, 2013.
In 2012, the salary for
the chief of police of Inglewood was $14,953 monthly. For reasons unknown,
the chief’s salary was not
listed in the city’s budget for 2013 and 2014, but
city hall insiders have confirmed that Fronterotta’s
salary is higher now than
when he was interim chief
up until January of 2013.
District 2’s councilman,
Alex Padilla, is a former
Santa Monica police officer who was elected council member for D-2 in June,
2013. He gets an annual pension of $185,741.76
from the City of Santa
Monica along with his City
of Inglewood salary (approximately $62k + benefits).
Butts has admitted to
having groomed Fronterotta. “I was his first supervisor when he went to patrol after graduating from
the police academy,” said
Butts the day that the new
IPD chief was confirmed.
Padilla was formally endorsed and significantly funded by Butts for the
2013 city council campaign. Butts is also a former Santa Monica policeman who receives an annual pension of $236,914.20
from Santa Monica along
with his City of Inglewood
pay.
Neither Fronterotta,
Butts nor Padilla responded to the requests for comment.

February 21, 2014

INGLEWOOD COMMUNITY CALENDAR
The Friends of the Hyde Park
Miriam Matthews Library present: Model Me Over—Mind/
Body/Spirit/Heart. Workshops for
youths aged 13-18 years focuses on
building character and self-esteem
through basic modeling techniques
and self-empowering activities.
The next and final workshop will
be on Friday, Feb. 21, 3:30 p.m.-5
p.m. Hyde Park Miriam Matthews
Library, 2205 Florence Ave. Los
Angeles, CA 90043. Please e-mail
ModelMeOver09@gmail.com.
•••
“Growth Groups” at Zion Hill
Baptist Church is a series of financial and health classes on how to
grow your life. The classes start
February 3 and continue through
March 10. Zion Hill, 7860 10th
Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90043. For
more information, please call
(323) 753-4610.
•••
A Day of Demand: National Reparations Day will be Thursday,
March 6 from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Demand Reparations for the intentional holocaust of slavery in
memory of our ancestors. Free
vendor space, speakers, performers and organizations. Tragniew
Park, 839 S. Central Avenue,
Compton CA 90220. For more
information, please call Steve
Taylor at (714) 970-1227. For
general information, call Mr.
John Peoples at (310) 632-0577,

e-mail NationalReparationDay3613@gmail.com or write to:
National Reparations Day Committee, P.O. Box 6286, Compton
CA 90224-6286.
•••
The Citizen Police Oversight
Commission meets every second
Wednesday of the month at 6:30
p.m. The next meeting is on Wed.,
March 12. The meetings take
place on the 9th floor of Inglewood’s city hall at One Manchester. For more information, please
call (310) 412-5280.
•••
The Metro South Bay Service
Council usually meets the second
Friday of each month at 9:30 a.m.
at Inglewood’s city hall in the
Community Room A located on
the 1st Floor. The next meeting
will be on March 14, 9:30 a.m.
For more information, please call
(213) 922-1282 or visit the Web
site at www.metro.net/about/localservice-councils/sba.
•••
The Inglewood Arts Commission
meets every third Wednesday of
every month at 6:30 p.m. at Inglewood’s city hall in the Community
Room A located on the 1st Floor.
The next meeting will be on March
19. For more information, please
call (310) 412- 5280.
•••
The City of Inglewood Parks &
Recreation Commission usually

meets every first Thursday of the
month at 6 p.m. The next meeting
will be on March 6. The meetings
usually take place on the 9th floor
of Inglewood’s city hall at One
Manchester. For more information, please call (310) 412-8750.
•••
The Inglewood Unified School
District (IUSD) Trustee/Advisory Board of Education Meeting
usually takes place every third
Wednesday of the month. The next
meeting will be on March 19. The
meetings take place in the Dr. Ernest Shaw Board Room, 5:30 p.m.
at IUSD’s main office, 401 S. Inglewood Avenue in Inglewood.
For more information, please call
(310) 419-2700.
•••
Parking Traffic Commission
meeting meets the fourth Wednesday of each month at 7:00 p.m. on
the 9th floor of Inglewood’s city
hall at One Manchester. The next
meeting will be on February 26.
For more information, please call
(310) 412-5280.
•••
The City of Inglewood Planning
Commission meets every first
Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m.
The next meeting will be on
March 5. The meetings take place
on the 9th floor of Inglewood’s
city hall at One Manchester. For
more information, please call
(310) 412-5280.

Biddy Mason from pg. 5
children in 1856.
“She started First AME
(1872) right on her property in downtown Los Angeles on Spring Street
and 4th Street. It is where
the State Building sits today. That was owned by a
Genre 19 from pg. 4
I first learned of them
through their comics work
in their premiere publication, Prodigal: Egg of
First Light.
Prodigal... is pulp action adventure for the
post-modern age. It is
what Indiana Jones would
look like with more than
a splash of color and a
whole lot more magic.
It is the audience’s introduction to the world of
Pae Mei Jacinto and her
partner Byron Lennox,
so-called “recovery experts.” This story is not
the first of their adventures, a fact that comes
through the telling of the
tale, just the first one we
get to read. This quality
comes through from the
opening page where we
meet our heroine and hero
fully realized in their banter and bickering, their
MorningsideParkChronicle.com

Black woman,” said Ms.
Washington.
First African Methodist Episcopal Church is the
oldest African-American
church in Los Angeles.
“She was a slave and
she decided I don’t have
to work for the man. I can
buy my way to freedom.

And she did. And she created freedom for her children and generations to
come. I see Black women going back to that route
again, “ said Washington.
A great chapter of L.A.
history from a living legend who is making history
for the future.

world fully fleshed out in
gorgeous colors and textures. For this adventure,
our heroes are asked to
recover the fabulous object that gives the story its
title for an order of mysterious Eastern monks.
As usual, what sounded
like such a simple mission
goes so many shades of
wrong that one wonders
how Pae Mei and Byron
could have survived for
as long as they seemed to
have if every case went as
far south as Antarctica.
Written and lettered
by Geoffrey Thorne and
drawn and colored by
Todd Harris, Prodigal can
be found on Amazon.com
or ordered through your
local bookstore and comics shop.
The title was the first
work I saw by these two
gentlemen but it was not
the last.
Next up for these two

busy men was Journeymen.
Serialized last year in
Dark Horse Presents,
Journeymen introduced
another fully realized
world and another pair of
heroes. This time around
the hook was spacetime
travel and dimension hopping. The world was a corporate-controlled dystopian future. The pair found
themselves the unlikely allies of J.M. Swift and
Dr. Hayley Shore. This
multi-part story has yet
to be collected; interested
readers will have to track
down the issues of DHP
from Dark Horse either in
print or as digital copies.
And the men of Genre
19 have more in the works
as their very filled schedules in other arenas allow.
Seek out their work.
You will be glad you did.
Until next time, folks.
Namaste.

Morningside Park Chronicle

February 21, 2014

letters

Is this what
happens in
Santa Monica?

Dear Editor,
Great newspaper.
I’ll be honest with you,
I cannot remember the
last time I grocery
shopped in the City of Inglewood.
When the Von’s on
Manchester first opened, I
went there for a while but
I did not like the way I
was treated. I’ll give you
an example: I requested a
Vons Rewards Card and
was sent to customer ser-

f rom

our

readers

vice where I was asked to
show my drivers license.
Well, I had changed handbags and since they told
me I absolutely had to
show some kind of ID to
get the card, I informed
them I would go home,
get the license and be
back in about 20 minutes.
When I returned with
drivers license in hand,
the employee told me she
had thrown my application away because she
thought I wasn’t telling
the truth.!! A couple of
weeks later, I stopped by
the Ralphs in Westchester
to get a few items and as I
reached the checkout

stand, the grocery checker
casually asked me if I
would like a rewards card,
I said yes, she reached under the cash register and
gave me the card. It was
just that simple. There
were other things about
that Vons on Manchester,
they didn’t want to take
my check -- said it
wouldn’t go through, and
I had to demand it be reentered, plus they didn’t
have nearly the variety as
the other Von Pavillons’
so I decided to take my
business elsewhere.
San Kofa,
Inglewood, CA

The Chronicle is a community newspaper in, from and for Inglewood;

We want to hear from you!
MPC, P.O. Box 2155, Inglewood CA 90305
or via e-mail at: letters@MPChronicle.net
or leave a message at: (424) 261-3019
Please include full name and telephone number (for verification purposes only).
If requested, names will be withheld from publication.

Please note that letters are printed and/or edited at the discretion of the Chronicle.
Letters conveyed via telephone may be reproduced on-line.

Papillion from pg. 1
ing to change. Instead of
circles around a few art
schools defining what art
in is L.A. to the world
it’s really going to open
up. People are coming
here from different places
forming new art communities, so it’s a new dynamism,” he said.
As a longtime patron of
the arts I felt Jeffrey Deitch brought more inclusiveness and openness to
MOCA as the director.
Art at MOCA was more
fun under Deitch. Ironically it was actually more
representative of what
L.A. is under Deitch.
“If you read the L.A.
Times it was all this stuff
‘Deitch lost the community, no rapport with the
community’ As if the
community is 500 people and kind of a circle
of people, teachers and
Lakin from pg. 1
Southwest College was
open in 1967 as a response to the Watts Rebellion in 1965.
“We met at Trade Tech.
He was a serious man. He
was extremely focused,”
said Larry Aubrey, an In-

Page 7

alumni from CalArts and
UCLA. That is not the
community. L.A. has many communities and for a
public museum [that] is
connected with the city
and is supported by the
city you have to be open
to all these communities and encourage all the
communities to connect.”
Deitch seemed to have
a great rapport with the
community in Leimert
Park.
“It’s all happening here.
It’s wonderful that someone like Michelle can
open up and draw this
crowd and she has great
instincts on how to do this
and she is going to connect and draw an international audience here,” said
Deitch.
Papillion re-launched
the P.I.A. gallery in
Leimert Park after having
first launching it on the
edge of L.A.’s old black

eastside on Main Street.
Papillion seemed to
echo Deitch’s idea of art
when I spoke to her back
in 2012. “There is a division in the art community
here. In New York, actors,
poets, musicians, dancers, photographers, painters, writers everyone just
hangs out together. There
is no separation in what
you do; it’s just the arts.”
And it is just the arts,
like it is just L.A.
How can we move to a
city that is just L.A.? Not
South L.A., East L.A.,
West L.A. and maybe not
so much a city that loses
its suburban identities, but
how can we become a city
where culture and “real”
art isn’t something that
is viewed as only visual,
white, CalArts and flows
downward?
Los Angeles seems too
big of a city to have such
a narrow definition of art.

glewood resident and one
of the founding board
members of the college.
Recounting how Lakin
was instrumental in the
remodeled Physical Fitness Center named after him at Southwest P.E.,
faculty member Henry
Washington told how La-

kin lamented, “We pay
taxes just like everyone
else. How come we don’t
have anything?”
For more information
on Southwest College,
please e-mail lasccommunications@lasc.edu
or telephone to (323) 2415225.
MorningsideParkChronicle.com

by

Rhonda’s
Wellness
Corner

Rhonda Kuykendall-Jabari

Chakras and Whole Body Health: pt.1
This article is an introduction to a series in
which we will discuss
seven main chakras and
the five major elimination
systems of the physical
body governed by each
chakra.
Plants, animals, humans
and all living beings have a
physical body surrounded
by an etheric body (sometimes called chi, qi, ki,
prana, vayu, libido, etc.)
made up of several layers
of electromagnetic energy.
Chi is believed to be the
vital life force energy of
the universe. While Chi
can exist without a physical body, a physical body
cannot live without Chi.
Chi forms meridians that
run through glands, nerves,
major organs and energy
centers. These meridians
flow through, support and
sustain the physical body.
Energy moves through meridians and is processed in
the chakras, which maintain the physical, mental,
emotional and spiritual

aspects of our being.
Chakra is a Sanskrit
term which means “wheel
of light.” Cyndi Dale,
author of New Chakra
Healing, explains “chakras
regulate, maintain, and
manage the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
aspects of our being on the
physical plane. Chakras
themselves serve as revolving doors or portals
between our body, mind
and soul.” In other words,
chakras receive vibrations
from various dimensions
of consciousness, then
they process the energy received so it can be assimilated and used for transforming the physical body.
Each chakra corresponds
with specific organs and
systems in the physical
body. When a chakra is
blocked, the physical body
is affected.
In our next article (part
2 of 8 parts), we will
explore the root chakra
which is associated with
the kidneys and bladder.

Smith from pg. 3

of Black Engineers, he
worked in the LMU Office of Admissions under the Assistant Director
of Undergraduate Admissions, and he was heavily involved in community
service and social justice
initiatives amongst LMU
students.
After graduating from
LMU, he worked for the
Posse Foundation for
two years before going to
Walsh. “My experience
with Posse not only allowed me to give back to
my community but also
allowed me to be an asset
towards cultivating student leadership.”
“I owe much of my
achievement to high
school sports which kept
me away from gangs and
violence, teachers and
mentors who gave me
the raw truth about life,
my high school counselor, organizations such as
the Blazers and A Place
Called Home, and my
mom who was committed
to creating opportunities
for her children.”

ty. Raised by a hard-working mom, but seeing his
two older brothers and besieged by challenges, he
made it his goal at “The
Verb” to go beyond expectations. He was the salutatorian of his graduating
class and received a full
tuition scholarship to pursue engineering at Loyola
Marymount University
(LMU), a school only 30
minutes west of his home
in Central Los Angeles.
LMU was a huge
change and challenge for
him. In describing his college experience, he said,
“LMU was different from
anything I had ever experienced in my life; it was
exciting, challenging, and
it played a tremendous
role in helping me define
who I am.”
He has also found a
niche in community and
professional development
organizations. He served
as the President and Regional Programs Chair
of the National Society

Hundreds filled the gallery, footpaths and streets outside the premier of Papillion when it opened Saturday night, February 15 in Leimert Park. Mark Bradford, Jeffrey Deitch and too many more than can be named here were on hand to enjoy the art that will surely be appreciated as a landmark evening.